14-03-2021, 11:34 AM
Probably too many square pegs in round holes and, if he is going to be an absentee landlord, Eisner needs a really good ‘agent’ with clear lines of responsibility and the commensurate authority.
Whether Catlin is that agent in terms of management ability and management skills I don’t know but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t have a football brain.
If he has shortcomings in the business area that’s pretty terminal but in the football area he can easily make up for his own shortcoming by assembling a Football non- executive board ie people who have played the game at a decent level, still have contacts in the game, have the experience of being in management and, maybe, sometimes failing (nothing wrong with that as you learn more in failure than you do in success, the trick is not to repeat the same mistakes twice).
An extra cost of course, but a modest one compared to the expensive lessons Pompey are learning right now, allegedly Einstein said that Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again....and expecting things to get better.
I have been on both sides of the fence, as a CEO with a non-executive board ‘assisting’ me by questioning my plans and decisions on behalf of the shareholders and as a non- exec asking the often obvious questions the CEO has neglected to ask himself (and extreme stress leads to bad decision making).
Can’t help but feel that Catlin is so busy putting out today’s fires that he doesn’t realise that he and those around him are, inadvertently, lighting tomorrow’s fires: endless firefighting gets you nowhere (unless your a fireman of course !)
Whether Catlin is that agent in terms of management ability and management skills I don’t know but it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t have a football brain.
If he has shortcomings in the business area that’s pretty terminal but in the football area he can easily make up for his own shortcoming by assembling a Football non- executive board ie people who have played the game at a decent level, still have contacts in the game, have the experience of being in management and, maybe, sometimes failing (nothing wrong with that as you learn more in failure than you do in success, the trick is not to repeat the same mistakes twice).
An extra cost of course, but a modest one compared to the expensive lessons Pompey are learning right now, allegedly Einstein said that Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again....and expecting things to get better.
I have been on both sides of the fence, as a CEO with a non-executive board ‘assisting’ me by questioning my plans and decisions on behalf of the shareholders and as a non- exec asking the often obvious questions the CEO has neglected to ask himself (and extreme stress leads to bad decision making).
Can’t help but feel that Catlin is so busy putting out today’s fires that he doesn’t realise that he and those around him are, inadvertently, lighting tomorrow’s fires: endless firefighting gets you nowhere (unless your a fireman of course !)